capefeather
toot
While I do think that the anecdotes are unhelpful, an argument can be formulated in many ways, and the posts that are being called "butthurt" are still arguments, even if they're "emotional". To expect people to be stoic all the time is a "Straw Vulcan" oversimplification of how arguments work, and ignores the fact that arguments are necessarily driven by some foundational goal, something to protect and generally feel strongly about. I haven't watched much Star Trek but even Spock has expressed statements along the lines of empathizing with the struggles of others. An argument without any apparent foundation merely has a hidden foundation that the arguer is (intentionally or not) smuggling in, and it's easy to criticize the parties for whom the foundation is obvious. I don't know, I just find it kind of disingenuous to criticize the "butthurt" when really every party can be criticized for their role in the vitriol-spewing.
I think the bigger problem is the straw man that some people have constructed that the goal is to eradicate all suffering. Supposedly, all these bleeding heart liberals ultimately aspire toward a perfectly happy society where everybody's forced into an opium-induced blissful coma and robots do all the maintenance work, or some other such nonsense. Ultimately this is the "argument" that's being refuted by saying, "Shit happens. Deal with it." Applied to more down-to-earth issues like "how to mitigate [the negative impacts of] bullying," it becomes incredibly silly, as several others have already demonstrated.
This gets into another issue I'm finding is that posting about how to deal with bullying is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The topic at hand is "how to mitigate [the negative impacts of] bullying," and if you talk solely about what the victim could do, you shouldn't be surprised if people interpret you as suggesting that outside parties should do nothing. Putting the focus squarely on the bully victim is to model him/her as an Ideal Rational Person(TM), which is ridiculous enough when applied to adults... It's nice to say that children should execute the perfect way of dealing with bullying to reasonably minimize the damage and reasonably maximize the benefit, but children have to actually, y'know, learn how to do so. And that's what this entire discussion is trying to address in the first place!
I know that some people love to believe that they have infinite free will and they can change everything about themselves at will, but even time travel can't give you that.
Also, something I wanted to talk about in the OP: Psychologists tell you to focus on improving yourself (albeit they should generally also teach you how to do so) because that really is the most effective approach to dealing with relationships. After all, you know yourself far better than you know other people.
I think the bigger problem is the straw man that some people have constructed that the goal is to eradicate all suffering. Supposedly, all these bleeding heart liberals ultimately aspire toward a perfectly happy society where everybody's forced into an opium-induced blissful coma and robots do all the maintenance work, or some other such nonsense. Ultimately this is the "argument" that's being refuted by saying, "Shit happens. Deal with it." Applied to more down-to-earth issues like "how to mitigate [the negative impacts of] bullying," it becomes incredibly silly, as several others have already demonstrated.
This gets into another issue I'm finding is that posting about how to deal with bullying is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The topic at hand is "how to mitigate [the negative impacts of] bullying," and if you talk solely about what the victim could do, you shouldn't be surprised if people interpret you as suggesting that outside parties should do nothing. Putting the focus squarely on the bully victim is to model him/her as an Ideal Rational Person(TM), which is ridiculous enough when applied to adults... It's nice to say that children should execute the perfect way of dealing with bullying to reasonably minimize the damage and reasonably maximize the benefit, but children have to actually, y'know, learn how to do so. And that's what this entire discussion is trying to address in the first place!
I know that some people love to believe that they have infinite free will and they can change everything about themselves at will, but even time travel can't give you that.
Also, something I wanted to talk about in the OP: Psychologists tell you to focus on improving yourself (albeit they should generally also teach you how to do so) because that really is the most effective approach to dealing with relationships. After all, you know yourself far better than you know other people.